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Technology

New devices shortcut wilderness skills

Above: The SteriPEN uses ultraviolet light to purify a glass of water in 48 seconds.
Left: A capacitance glove made by Marmot allows La Tournous, a blogger, to activate the touch screens on portable devices while wearing gloves.

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View SlideshowRequest to buy this photoKARL MONDON | CONTRA COSTA TIMES PHOTOSChuck La Tournous works a Bluetooth-equipped hi-Fun Glove to use his cellphone in his pocket while keeping his hand warm.

SAN FRANCISCO — Chuck La Tournous was about two minutes into his presentation at Macworld 2013, “Tech vs. Wild,” when a Boy Scoutish-looking kid in the audience shot up his hand.

“I go camping a lot,” he said, “but they won’t let us take our tech into the woods.”

That sort of anti-geek outdoorsman mentality might soon go the way of analog television. At the 29th annual Macworld this month, the message was that when the going gets tough, the tough get even techier.

“The idea is that tech can be useful in the great outdoors,” said La Tournous, a 50-year-old blogger from western New Jersey and founder of TrailCamper.com. “As a kid, you maybe could have taken your Walkman on a campout, but today, there’s a lot of good reasons to take tech with you. It doesn’t distract from the outdoors experience, it enhances it.”

A reporter and photographer decided to take a hike with La Tournous, carrying some of the survival products he has reviewed on his website. But instead of heading for the trails, we joined him on a walk through the urban wilderness a few blocks from San Francisco’s convention center, the Moscone Center.

We left Macworld and headed toward Market and 6th streets, where the drug-dealing, Dumpster-diving, panhandling denizens can make an out-of-towner feel like a babe in the woods.

Although some of La Tournous’ tech tools, such as stargazing apps and waterproof smartphone cases, are clearly better-suited to the wilderness, others would come in handy in an urban environment gone bad, such as in the face of terrorist attacks, civil unrest, earthquakes and other disasters, he said. He tested his theory after superstorm Sandy knocked out power in his hometown for more than a week last fall.

Walking up Market, La Tournous pulled out one of the survival tools he presented at Macworld. It’s a portable solar battery charger the size of a large napkin (Goal Zero, $80 plus a $30 rechargeable battery) that can charge your smartphone with just three to four hours of sunlight. If power goes out, as it did after Sandy, you still can keep your phone juiced up.

And if cell coverage dies, La Tournous recommends SPOT Connect ($170, with a yearly $99 subscription). If you’re bumped off the grid, either in the woods or in a post-disaster urban environment, this small device sends a message via satellite to alert the cavalry.

Walking down 6th, La Tournous showed off more tools for when things go bad. There’s the PowerPot from Practical Power ($149), a thermoelectric generator that transforms the heat of a fire into electricity for charging devices just by boiling a pot of water — “All you need is fire,” he said, “so this will get you power even if the sun’s not out.”

Then there’s the water purifier that uses ultraviolet light (SteriPEN, $99) to clean a liter of drinking water in 48 seconds. “After Sandy, a lot of towns had boil advisories,” Tournous said, “so this would have taken care of the problem of getting drinking water.”